Russia in the News–Abortion Limits & Safe Haven Laws

Two articles were published in the last 24 hours about some serious issues that have a huge effect on the orphan population in Russia.

According to a United Nations survey in 2004, Russia had the world’s highest abortion rate: 53.7 per 100 women.

There is very little stigma or restrictions on abortions across Russia. This commonplace practice in their culture actually brings the number of orphans down, which may be good to some people… but not to me. It just tells you how many hundreds of thousands of children are unwanted.

In 2009, the Health Ministry recorded a total of nearly 1.3 million abortions. Imagine if just half of those had been born… where would they be now? Orphanages would be my first guess.

So, what’s the real problem here? For me, I see a nation that’s broken and can barely care for themselves let alone millions of unborn and abandoned children. The orphans aren’t the problem, they’re the victims.

In the short-run, I can see that limiting abortions and establishing safe havens for unwanted children may increase the orphan population. But looking beyond that, I can see these possible improvements have great potential to start reaching into the heart of the orphan crisis in Russia.